In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, three treatment methods outside the realm of traditional western medicine appeared. Mesmerism, Perkinsism, and acupuncture were accompanied by reports of improvement or cure in cases resistant to other medical treatments. Upon demonstration of a fallacious theoretical system, and the implication of the "imagination" as a crucial or effective agent, medicine abandoned interest in the use of Mesmeric or Perkinean therapy. Preliminary study suggests that this applied to nineteenth centry acupuncture in the west. In 1784 a French royal commission labelled Mesmer's theory as specious. In 1800, the British physician John Haygarth published a series of experiments exposing Elisha Perkins's theory as groundless. Both studies acknowledged the therapeutic phenomena, but scientists and physicians appeared uninterested. Acupuncture did not provoke a formal attack but, despite medical reports of therapeutic effectiveness, it too was labelled as based on the "imagination" and did not attract scientific curiosity. This is a pilot study of the relationship between fallacious theory, implication of the "imagination", and withdrawal or absence of curiosity about associated therapeutic phenomena in medical history.